Unless the youth have dreams and the elders the wisdom of experience, the people perish.
Isaiah
Probus sought to revive the democratic values of Rome’s early Republic. He had faith in a better future, while many Romans had no vision but to survive amidst worsening hardships and oppression.
Except for Seneca, no pagan Roman cried for justice for the oppressed anywhere in Latin literature. Greek culture had had a strong sense of tragedy, its cult of Asklepios, the god of healing, honouring physicians and philanthropy, but Roman culture had no sympathy for losers. Those Romans admiring the philosophy of Stoicism denied their own suffering.
The Roman world was in decline, yet, again, no Roman writer noted it. Official censorship helps explain this but more influential was the upper classes’ insulation from the stresses upon society. The writing of Roman history deteriorated sharply after the first century. Like a frog in water slowly brought to the boil adapting its temperature to its environment and thus unaware of change, a society without honest historical memory is unaware of its need to act rather than passively react.
Many of the ruling class were Epicureans, a group criticized by the Stoic Epictectus:
I ask you to imagine a nation filled with people having your Epicurean principles, in which no one would marry, no one would have children, and no one’s family or property would be safe. Where could you find decent, loyal citizens to be farmers, soldiers, administrators and doctors? Where could you find teachers to educate people in their duties?1
Mani, the Persian debated by Archelaus, had similarly taught that marriage, sex, politics, business and the like were evils, all matter and worldly affairs the domain of devils.2 He held renunciation of the world a religious virtue, while announcing the impending violent destruction of the world in a war between the holy ones and the wicked. Heretical Christian sects such as the Montanists held to much the same ethos, so too the Gnostic monks fleeing public life. ‘If someone commits murder he regards it as a crime; if the murder is carried out in the name of the state, it is considered virtuous,’ wrote Cyprian, convert and Bishop of Carthage, an outspoken challenger of the abuses of Roman society. ‘The laws are written on the twelve tablets and in the public edict but the judge sells his decision to the highest bidder, wills are falsified, law is in league with crime,’3 he continued.
Writing to a pagan, Demetrianus, Cyprian expressed a frank pessimism towards the Empire.
Even if we Christians did not speak and give expression to the warnings of Holy Scriptures and divine prophecies, the world itself is already announcing its decay, events themselves the evidence of its decline and fall. In winter there is no longer plenty of water for the seed, in summer no longer the accustomed heat to mature them; nor is spring weather happy nor autumn fertile in harvest. The production of silver and gold has gone down in the exhausted mines as well as the production of marble; the worked out veins give less and less from day to day. The cultivator is no longer in the fields, the sailor on the seas, soldier in the barracks, honesty in the marketplace, justice in the law court, solidarity in friendship, skill in the arts, discipline in manners … As for the greater frequency of wars, the even more grievous preoccupation with famines and sterility, the raging of diseases which ruin health, the devastation wreaked by the plague in the midst of men – this too, make no mistake, was foretold: That in the last times ills are multiplied, misfortunes are diversified and the approach of the day of judgement, God’s angry punishment moves towards the ruin of men. You are mistaken, in your foolish ignorance of the truth, when you protest that these things happen because we do not worship the gods; they happen because you do no worship God.4
Epidemics ravaging the population do not alone explain its continual reduction. A world weariness united the atheist philosopher Lucretius, Cyprian the saint and people of every class. Inflation and ever higher taxes discouraged marriage. The widespread use of lead cooking utensils and water pipes caused sterility, birth defects, mental retardation, paralysis and fits of rage.5 Garum, the fish paste Romans were exceedingly fond of, was so salty that modern efforts to use the Roman recipe are virtually inedible. A symptom of lead poisoning is the loss of the ability to taste saltiness.6
Upward social mobility, common in the first century, had stagnated except where former slaves of the state rose to leadership. Meanwhile, poor free folk were reduced to virtual slavery, the middle class of craftsmen and entrepreneurs taxed into fleeing cities and towns.
Removed from an active career, the veterans could more easily be critical of society. Few invest twenty-five years of life in a profession only to totally reject it. To scorn public responsibility and claim to directly honour God was appealing yet ambiguous. Christ had condemned those who buried their talents. Christian soldiers could sympathize with pagan criticism of Christian avoidance of public duty.
It was bad enough that many civilians scorned the men at arms who defended them from barbarism. That was understandable. Many soldiers were oppressors. But rejection of public service by these same critics must have seemed hypocrisy. The Empire was in peril.
The highest award for gallantry bestowed by Rome was for soldiers who risked their lives to save a citizen.
The gravestones of thousands of Roman soldiers survive.7 The minority who did retire died within a few years, perhaps felled psychosomatically, no longer feeling empowered or of use. Like warhorses put to pasture, some were restless at the sound of distant trumpets.
Probus, emperor while Mauricius was in Jerusalem, was neither a Christian nor a persecutor. His sister Claudia, a cognomen meaning ‘the cripple’, was praised for her virtue by the pagan Vopiscus. His brother Calocerus would be bishop of Byzance, his son Adrianus and nephew Demetrius military martyrs.8
Probus was ‘a man of every virtue’ as the Senate proclaimed, declaring him a god after his death when it had no need to flatter nor fear him.
Probus wrote that ‘… it is no longer in my power to lay down a title so full of envy and danger. I must continue to play the part which the soldiers have imposed upon me.’9
He was quoted in an extraordinary statement. ‘Soon,’ he said, ‘we shall have no need of soldiers.’ What else is this than saying ‘Soon there will be no Roman soldier?’
Everywhere the commonwealth will reign and will rule all in security. The entire world will forge no arms and will furnish no rations, the ox will be kept for the plough and the horse will be bred for peace, there will be no wars and no captivity, in all places peace will reign, in all places the laws of Rome, and in all places our judges.10
Perhaps Probus’ intent was a citizens’ militia working family farms and paying its own way, requiring little tax support – a system like that of the early Roman Republic. This might have provided the defence in depth that the frontiers lacked and the moral incentive for patriotism. Dream or not, the Empire needed some vision of a better future to survive, let alone progress.
How much if any of the above statement was genuinely Probus’ and how much the non-Christian historian Vopiscus’ is anyone’s guess. The statement could be the dream of a biblical prophet. That oxen would be kept only for the plough – and not for pagan sacrifice – suggests a Christian’s views.
Probus was an able soldier, a ramrod of a man, popular but strong willed, not a militarist. He antagonized part of the army by ruling that soldiers in peacetime should earn their keep by building public works, dredging the canal system of Egypt and planting vineyards on the Pannonian Danube.
The Emperor was an Illyrian (Albanian) in ancestry, born and raised in Egypt.11 He was a professional career man. In speaking of having no need of soldiers, he presumably intended to return to the democratic values of the early Roman Republic, when every able citizen served in the army reserve. The ruling classes for centuries had long ago opposed a democratic army from fear that an armed citizenry would revolt.
Probus was far more respectful of the Senate than his predecessors. Yet the Senate, composed of the wealthiest land owners in the Empire, could hardly have been enthusiastic toward his program.
The Empire was at a turning point. It had reached a crisis. The decisions made would mark the western world for ages to come. Kairos, as the Greeks called it, the opportune moment, had arrived. To recognize and act upon it was viewed as a grace of God by Christians.
Early in his career in the 250s, Probus had been given command of a task force of ‘six cohorts of Saracens and entrusting to him besides the Gallic irregulars [auxiliaries?] along with that company of Persians which Artebessis the Syrian delivered over to us’. These Saracens were in all likelihood Ituraeans and the Persian Armenians. Quite probably, this task force, in size a legion, would provide the veterans on recall leading the Theban Legion. Cohorts of Ituraean archers had long been stationed in Egypt. Ituraea was southern Israel, the Saracens the Arabs of the Negeb and its borders. In the late third century these Ituraean units disappeared from record without explanation.
Long before the Romans the pharaohs of Egypt had recruited Nubian archers from the Kharga oasis tribe known as Medjay, a term that came to mean soldier or policeman.
Probus ordered the creation of a new legion, to be recruited largely from men long denied citizenship and permission to serve in the legions, the people of southern Egypt, the Thebaid. In the dwindling population of the Empire, they were an untapped resource. Probus asked veterans to return to serve as campidoctores,12 training officers, evocati, veterans on recall, forming up the new legion. Their task was not combat and perhaps did not necessitate the usual rituals and oaths. They would be in charge until the new unit was inaugurated. Especially, he sought veterans of the desert army who understood Egyptian sensibilities, for the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile were regarded as an explosive lot when badly led.
Roman law pressed upon the veterans for decision.Veterans were free of most taxes for the first five years of retirement, after which they were subject to impositions rapidly eroding their income.13They could be drafted to become tax collectors and given a quota which, if unachieved, had to be made up from personal finances. These liturgies, as they were called, devastated the middle class. Neighbour was set against neighbour, destroying the community. Collections over the quota could be legally personally pocketed. The designers of the system presumed everyone as avaricious as themselves.
To remain in retirement and refuse recall was not attractive when threatened with liturgies.
The tugs of responsibility to the Emperor and those of protecting colleagues in faith pulled for once in the same direction.
Egypt was the most Christian province in the Empire. Unbaptized Christian recruits would benefit by having officers of their faith. If Bishop Zabdas opposed the veterans responding to recall there is no record of it.
Since the veterans would be confirmed by Bishop Marcellus in Syria, they must have ventured from Jerusalem to that province, perhaps travelling the road to Caesarea Maritima on the coast to take voyage from there to Antioch, Syria’s chief port. Caesarea was the Roman capital of the holy land. Its breakwaters, quays, temples, aqueduct and government buildings, surrounded by a wall, had been accomplished under Herod the Great. The population was almost evenly divided between Jews and gentiles. The writer Origen and the Church historian Eusebius, an archbishop of the city, would be among its celebrated writers.
From Caesarea they may have embarked for Antioch. The trip by sea could be made in leisurely fashion with nights at anchor at Sidon, Beirut or Tripolis.
It was in Antioch that believers were first called Christian. The gospel writer Luke, in tradition a physician and artist, was probably from Antioch. It was in Antioch that the faith first grew in an environment not entirely Jewish.
The team of officers and men assembled to organize and train the new legion for the most part probably did not take part in its recruitment. The task before the headquarters cadre demanded plans, schedules and decisions. A legion was a unit integrating men of many ethnic backgrounds, all citizens. Egypt’s II Traiana could provide some experienced men, its Legio Alexandriana, the grain fleet marines could provide others. Only the fleet accepted peregrini, in legal status non-citizen resident aliens, as soldiers.14 Auxiliary units along the Nile could provide other soldiers or be directly incorporated into the new unit. The priority, however, was to find a new source of recruits. Most native Egyptians, being deditici, legally prisoners of war, would not be eligible. Presumably, the new legion recruited tribal peoples bordering Egypt to fill out its ranks, especially Medjay of the oases west of the Nile.
The new unit’s duty station would be Britain, as shall be demonstrated, guarding its coast from invasion, by definition a defensive task. They would provide fortress garrisons and fleet marine, their tactics chiefly those of bowsmen.
That the Theban Legion’s leaders were all campidoctors, veterans on recall as training officers, can be deduced from their Acts. ‘Tunc Exsuperius quem ante princepem vel campidoctorum superius memoravi…,’ i.e. then Exsuperius who in front of the executive officer of the campidoctos above mentioned.15 Since only Mauricius, Exsuperius and Candidus were previously mentioned by name, they were campidoctors.
This was a special case, as the cadre planning the new fighting force saw it. Its Christian members saw it as proof to pagans of their patriotism.
The veterans were eager to again be of service. They did not realize that their apparent good fortune was the eye of the hurricane, Probus’ hopeful reign.